Go
by Firestar9mm
Summary: Bit Cloud faces his toughest challenge yet...


Go  
  
*****  
  
"This sucks. I'm out," Bit Cloud grumbled, tossing a card onto the table.  
  
Doctor Steve Toros smiled cheerfully at the blond boy. "You can't quit now! We've just started."  
  
Bit glared at him. Easy for him to say, HE wasn't up to his earlobes in debt.   
  
Across the table sat the doctor's daughter. Her mouth bent as she struggled to suppress a smirk. "God, I've never seen anyone lose so FAST." That statement earned her a glare of her own from Bit.  
  
Next to her sat the mercenary, as calm as a mountain lake. True to form, he had piles of money neatly stacked in front of him. He tented his fingers, looking over the table at his opponents like a wolf in a chicken coop.  
  
The final person at the table looked as contented as a well-modified lightning-saix. "Well, Bit, it looks like your racecar has made a pit stop on Pacific Avenue. You'll be staying at the fabulous Wild Eagle Hotel and Casino. Three thousand dollars, please. Room service is extra."  
  
Bit groaned. "Oh, come on, Jamie!"  
  
That youth shook his head. "Pay up."  
  
Bit leaned conspiratorially across the table, as if to share a secret with the mercenary. "Hey, Brad, lend me some money?"  
  
Hunter snickered, lips curving into a smile. "You've got to be kidding."  
  
Bit glowered at the longhaired shadowfox pilot, then turned to the young woman sitting on Brad's left. He pointed his index finger at her, thumb perpendicular to the ceiling, as if aiming a gun. "All right, Leena, stick 'em up."  
  
She allowed her violet eyes to widen in surprise. "What's that supposed to mean?"  
  
Bit stabbed at the air between them with his "gun" to emphasize his point. "Jamie has hotels on every piece of property he owns. I'm broke, so I'm mugging you to pay him."  
  
She laughed, a sound as soothing to his ears as glass breaking. "Get real, Bit! You're not getting my money!"  
  
Brad sighed. "Bit, don't you have any property?"  
  
The blond boy mumbled something like, "It's all mortgaged."  
  
The sale of two railroads for an exorbitant fee and unlimited free passage for Jamie on the only other piece of property Bit owned (St. Charles Place, to be exact) solved the dilemma, and Leena rolled the dice. True to form, her playing piece was the cannon.  
  
"HA ha!" she crowed triumphantly as she moved her piece around the board. "Marvin Gardens is mine!"  
  
After his turn, Brad caressed the brightly colored bills almost absently. Any form of currency, even useless pink and blue paper, caught his attention even better than Naomi Fluegel in hot pants. "How many houses do I have to buy before they become hotels?"  
  
"All right, snake eyes!" Doc Toros cheered. "That means I get two of every bill! We ARE playing that way, right?"  
  
"That's not in the rules!" Bit protested.  
  
Leena shushed him with a dismissive gesture. "Oh, we always play that way, Bit, everyone does."  
  
Bit growled and rolled the dice, moving his racecar around the board.  
  
Doc Toros laughed. "Pay up, Bit. I've got a hotel on Connecticut! Twelve hundred dollars, please."  
  
"Connecticut?! How could I owe you over a thousand dollars for Connecticut?! It's the cheapest property in the whole game!!" Bit shrieked.  
  
"Actually, Mediterranean is the cheapest property in the whole game," Jamie corrected calmly.   
  
"I've got a house on that one too!" Toros reported with a smile.   
  
Bit clasped his hands together, mute desperation shining in his eyes. "Doc, you can't do this to me. Let's make a deal!"  
  
Toros thought it over. "I'll need full artistic liberties on modifications for the Liger-Zero..."  
  
Bit groaned. "You're killing me, Doc!"  
  
Across the table, the protests began. "Doc!" Brad said in disgust. "You can't let him off easy!"  
  
"Bit!" Leena screeched. "You can't bargain with your zoid!"  
  
"But I'm LOSING!" Bit howled.  
  
*****  
  
"I hope Bit does all right in the battle today," Jamie said, turning from the view screen to look at the doctor. "He seemed really jumpy this morning."  
  
Jamie was putting it lightly. Bit was exhausted and jittery; he'd woken up hours before dawn from a dream in which the Backdraft group had challenged the Blitz team. However, instead of dropping the dark judge, they'd dropped all the houses and hotels on Connecticut Avenue, where the Liger-Zero had just landed. The shadowfox had just passed Go, and the reynos had circled overhead like a scavenger, waiting, waiting. The gunsniper had been doing a victory dance on Free Parking.  
  
"Get it together, Bit!" Brad admonished as he jockeyed for position around the battle zone. "Are you awake in there?"  
  
Leena was laughing as she sprayed the area with gunfire. Bit had never noticed just how creepy that laugh was. Somewhere in Leena Toros was a joyous little sociopath trying to get out.  
  
"Woo hoo!" Leena cheered. "Who's trigger-happy NOW?"  
  
Bit was lucky he had such a good rapport with the Liger-Zero, because he absolutely could not focus today. The metal beast moved like they shared a mind. Maybe they did. He was weightless. Free. He was made entirely of light. He could feel his hands, the paws, slapping against the hot shifting sand. His hand, the claws, ripping through metal, knocking the enemy zoids aside like toys.   
  
The buzzer sounded, blaring like an invasion of privacy across the field. "The battle is over...the battle is over..."  
  
"It's about time you woke up in there," Brad called.  
  
"Chalk up another fluke victory for Bit," Leena laughed.  
  
"At least it's not on his blooper reel," Brad said.  
  
Bit frowned amidst their laughter. "Oh, shut up."  
  
*****  
  
Bit sighed, leaning his head back over the top of the sofa. It had been a long day.  
  
"Nice work out there, everyone!" Doc Toros was, as usual, in a good mood. "More prize money for the Blitz team!"  
  
That got Brad's attention, of course. He sat up straighter on the sofa and extended his hand. "Well, let's see it, Doc."  
  
The doctor was happy to oblige. "Excellent maneuvering, Brad. Nice target points today, Leena," he added.  
  
"Thanks." Leena preened. "That'll learn 'em to mess with my gunsniper."  
  
"Well, I've got some stuff to do. See you all later!" Toros turned to leave the room.  
  
"Hey, Doc!" Bit jumped up. "What about my share?"  
  
Toros smiled. "Connecticut with a hotel, right? This should about cover it."  
  
A scream echoed across the darkening desert.  
  
*****  
  
Whenever we played Monopoly, my father would buy New York, St. James, and Tennesee, build hotels on them, then buy Illinois, Indiana, and Kentucky and build hotels on THOSE. He aptly nicknamed the entire area "Doom". The only way to avoid paying him was to land on Free Parking, which I almost never did. To this day, I have never beaten my father at Monopoly. To do so, I think one might need a gunsniper, or at the very least a saber tiger. *^_^*  
  
Please, please review! This is my first time in a zoid, if you know what I mean *^_^* 


End file.
